LogFAQs > #982886820

Suprak_the_Stud posted...

When everyone was salivating over that one Selzer poll I was like "that can't possibly be right". I go to Iowa for work all the time and that state is a cesspool. So I went to check other polls and literally that same day there was a Trump +9 from another polling group that I remembered being good in the past. So I asked in this topic and people were like "oh yeah that dude is a fraud everyone has been laughing at them all election".

That was the hardest day for me to not be a downer in here because I was like people are just straight up ignoring polls for no reason. "Oh Nate Silver is a fraud oh this other aggregator is a fraud oh the polling looks really good if you ignore like two thirds of the polls and only focus on these three specific pollsters".

People were setting themselves up to be willfully ignorant out of hope and I get that but then don't act confused and go "jeez how come the polls were wrong???"

Yeah I hate to say it but Nate Silver was right, other high rated Iowa pollsters showing differently was definitely a blow to the Selzer poll. Now, there are times where pollsters diverge and show wildly different results and the less expected one can be right. I got excited by the Selzer poll too. But there was always a chance it was just a large polling error which is what it was.

There can be use in just talking to people on the ground though. You can definitely get a sense of things that way. Eg my sister was working in Florida in 2020 and was pretty sure that it was going to go more to Trump which is what happened.